(PPP) Momo XIII: When She Turned
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: Before her menarche and subsequent affinity matching, she is just a colour and a number - a girl like any other in the facility, waiting for her future. She is the thirteenth Momo - Momo XIII.
1. Six

**A/N:** So Aiko put this crazy idea in to my head. She tends to do that. I do the same to her so all's fair in the world. :D Fitting an original world with original characters into a challenge designed for the canon worlds – and it works surprisingly well. Unless someone tries it with super-nova because then I think it won't.

So this fic is set in the larger verse going by the name of Pebbles Paint the Path – in which the digital world has its own mechanisms and its own way of choosing Chosen – if you want to call it that. You'll get a glimpse of it in this drabble and more in longer pieces. I'll recommend my series list for what goes where in the world. Or if you're following me, just be on the lookout for anything starting with (PPP) – easy abbreviation.

And the challenges it's for (the first two will be constant appearances):

Diversity Writing Challenge, A86 - write a fic that does not use only one consonants (z)  
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, colour prompt #55 – light pink (5 pts)  
Advent Calender 2014 Challenge, Day 17 – write about an OC

Enjoy!

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**Pebbles Paint the Path**

* * *

Momo XIII: When She Turned**  
_When She Turned Six_**

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When she turned six, Momo got her first glimpse of the training room.

It was an initiation of rites, or something like that. Every person at the facility who turned six was taken in the narrow hallway with a glass window looking in to the training room. Its entrance was somewhere else. Somewhere in the facility no six year old – or eight year old for that matter – had access to.

They had to wait until their menarche…or a little later than that. It all depended on how long the affinity matchings took. Most girls in the facility reached that stage between eleven and thirteen years of age. That was why there were so few girls above that age in the cafeteria. And nobody above fifteen. There used to be, when she was four. A girl who was almost eighteen, sitting with the nine and ten year olds. Not anymore.

The only times the girls saw those who'd had their menarche and affinity matchings were the glimpses of the training room. That first glimpse being one of the two acknowledgements of their birthdays the facility gave them.

The other was a coloured pebble every year to collect and count. The same colour for the same girl, but different girls got different colours. There were repeats, naturally. There were only ten colours. Not enough to go around. Momo's ones were pale pink and of varying degrees of shininess – just so she knew which one represented which year of her life. Pink was the most common – shared amongst all the Momo and Pinku. Of course, the girls had numbers as well. The combination of the two was unique to each girl. Momo's was thirteen.

She'd received her fifth pink pebble that morning, marking the start of her sixth year: her sixth birthday. She'd lost count. It was easy to lose count in the facility. Except the adults there always seemed to remember the important things. Schedules and things like that. She got the pebble with her breakfast tray, and a white coated woman after she'd eaten.

The white coated woman had brought her to the corridor and shown her the training room.

Momo drank in the sight. Midori – nineteen that was – had had her sixth birthday a few months long ago and had spent days afterwards telling the rest of them. She was the first on their table. Momo was the fifth, but even having four girls relay their impressions of the room did nothing to dampen its reception. Or add to its sense.

In the coming years she would learn about the different scenes they packed in to the training room and start preliminary preparations for them. "So you don't get yourselves killed in affinity matching," the white coats would say. "So we don't die of boredom," the older girls disagreed.

Either way, the training room was a sign for two things. That she was growing up. And there was a world bigger than white and grey and black walls out there.


	2. Seven

**A/N**: Diversity Writing Challenge, A87 - write a fic that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once  
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, word prompt #7 - discover (1 pt)

Enjoy!

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**Pebbles Paint the Path**

* * *

Momo XIII: When She Turned**  
_When She Turned Seven_**

* * *

When Momo turned seven, she realised that the glimpse of the training room wasn't a reward at all, but a warning. By then they'd had lessons: what to expect in the rooms, what levels they'd need to accomplish to progress or be retained, at what levels they'd be removed (though they hadn't been all that clear on what "removed" meant until it was demonstrated to them – once and, hopefully, never again), and the most frightening thing of them all: the statistics that predicted how many of them would actually achieve the pinnacle they demanded of them.

Almost no-one, was the bottom line. 'Though you all know we only need one of each of you,' they said, then moved on to another topic before they really grasped the meaning behind those words.

They knew later, though. It meant that all those who shared their name were replacements for them, and they were replacements too. Easily disposable if they didn't meet the levels set out for them. Easily disposable if someone climbed ahead of them on the food chain.

It wasn't just about having an affinity for any old digimon and then training and becoming strong. There were more specifics than that. Her classes were different than Midori's, different than Murasaki's, different than Aka's and Pinku's…though Pinku never really talked about her classes so it was hard to know. Pinku rarely talked about anything.

By the time she was seven, Momo knew what she had to be, what selection of digimon she had to have an affinity to, to make it past the matching process, and what rate of growth she'd have to have to achieve the mega evolution by seventeen. But knowing and knowing she could do it was different, and she knew there was a very slim chance – the sliver of percentage they gave in their statistics, because of the Momos that went before her, and the ones that came after.

Though she was lucky, because she was only Momo XIII. Midori was XIX. Pinku's number they weren't entirely short of, but it was in the thirties or fourties, rumour told. Murasaki was XX – twenty. All of them far ahead of her. The Momos were actually doing well for themselves. But even their percentages were low.

It made her not want to go to class, to stay holed up in bed in her zone with her six pink stones telling her age – but that was a frightening concept in itself. Those six stones were no longer a gift as well. They were the quicksand in her timer, counting down to the day she'd begin those tests in earnest and struggle to achieve those scores.

It all depended on her affinity, first. Then her ability and affinity, both. Ability could be improved. Affinity they were born with, created with. Affinity they couldn't control.

That was the most frightening bit, at seven years of age. That first menarche that would send them to the pedestal, to what was potentially the chopping block.


	3. Eight

**A/N**: Diversity Writing Challenge, A57 – 500 word drabble  
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, word prompt #22 – useless (1 pt).

Enjoy!

* * *

**Pebbles Paint the Path**

* * *

Momo XIII: When She Turned**  
_When She Turned Eight_**

* * *

When she turned eight, she lost and gained a friend.

"Friend" was relative in such a place, after all. There was the buried competition, the survival of the fittest that spurned them all on. They strove to be extraordinary, better than the others, better than their predecessors and anyone who might come up from beyond and below to upheave them.

But when they ate together, they were friends.

Momo and Pinku, and Midori and Aka and Murasaki. Midori was the oldest. Murasaki was the youngest, and the one they'd taken the longest to pick out of crowds. Because there were lots of Murasakis. Lots of competition to determine who would be the one who'd survive it all, and so she was the quietest and most withdrawn of them as well.

But mealtimes were a time where they were free. Where the competition didn't throttle them into silence and fear and hidden malice.

Until Murasaki - their Murasaki, XX - was gone, and another took her place.

This Murasaki was XXI - a year and a bit younger, and about to approach her first visit to the training room.

And she was very different. Loud instead of quiet. Excited instead of frightened. Naive instead of disillusioned. She hadn't learnt yet, learnt of the life she lived, the life she would continue to live. The price of failure hadn't quite clicked into her mind. It had taken them months after their first visit to the facility to realise it wasn't as glamorous as a new playground to be in. When the disappearances at the tables started to mean something more. When the stoic voices of the people in white coats began to weigh on their minds.

She would learn, they thought. She would learn, and then perhaps she would act more like the Murasaki they remembered. Would become more like her replacement as she was meant to be.

Now they knew what replacements meant.

They did wonder, of course - except Pinku who'd gone white with fear when she'd first noticed the new Murasaki and hadn't gained much colour in her complexion since. They wondered how Murasaki could have failed her tests so early, when they barely had any tests, just preparation for the ones that were coming, the ones that would begin in earnest when they reached their menarche. And the lack of answer frightened them, because they could just as easily fail, just as easily disappear and be replaced and someone like Murasaki XXI as she was now would not even realise an old one of them had passed and a new one had come.

They wondered at Pinku too, until it clicked. One that frightened them as well, because how many times had she already been replaced, with her number as high as it was, before they'd learnt to recognise the the things that defined them from their replacements. They'd already known, but it put things into a whole new perspective to see the new Murasaki and recognise her for what she was.


	4. Nine

**A/N**: Diversity Writing Challenge, A85 - write a fic that does not use up to three consonants (j, q, x)  
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, complex word prompt #176 – self-preservation (2 pts).

Enjoy!

**Pebbles Paint the Path**

Momo XIII: When She Turned**  
_When She Turned Nine_**

When Momo turned nine, Midori had reached her menarche and was whisked away. They wouldn't know the results until they themselves entered the training rooms. A new Midori greeted them, this one dark and cynical and who seemed to take delight in prodding poor Pinku.

It was no surprise to find Pinku gaining more and more reprimands because she was skipping meal times. But meal times were their free times. They couldn't be properly punished for starving themselves, if they chose to. And Momo would be sure to sneak some of her own meal to her when she dared.

The white coats were stricter with taking food back to their zones. At least the Momo and Pinku zones were close by. Aka's was on the other side but she refused to have a part in it. 'If she starves herself, that's her problem,' she said, somewhat coldly. Momo had known her long enough to know that was simply her way of hiding her own fear and anger.

Momo was sure Aka was going to do something about the new Midori. It wasn't allowed, and it wouldn't affect their chances until the affinity matchings had passed, but if Midori had passed hers, it would help that one of those coming below her had been eliminated, she supposed.

She doubted that was all Aka was thinking. She also doubted she could do something like that, and she hoped Aka could not as well.

But she could. And did. And Momo was left with a shell-shocked Pinku who would now not even eat what Momo brought her, and Murasaki.

Murasaki, at least, had been a bearable replacement. She'd learnt. She'd sobered up in the year she'd sat with them. She'd become one of the group.

And then, suddenly, only she and Momo were left of the group, waiting for the time when, somewhere in the coming few years, they'd reach their own menarches and be whisked away like Midori. And maybe they'd see Midori again, because who know what they'd done to Aka, who knew what Aka had done to the new Midori, who knew how much longer Pinku would survive when she went through classes like a ghost and couldn't even be force-fed.

And then, one day, it was a new Pinku, bleak but not as blink as her predecessor. The old Pinku had gone without a word, without a trace. 'Maybe she's in a better place,' said Murasaki. She still clung to some of her idealism, and Momo only wished now she knew where it had come from.

The time to their menarche had never looked so bleak, and when she was seven she'd learnt how bleak the world beyond that was.

There was a new Aka and Midori as well, of course, but for Momo and Murasaki, it was only the two of them. They didn't want new friends, so close to the time they'd part ways. Or people like the Midori in between who'd destroy them.


	5. Ten

**A/N**: Diversity Writing Challenge, A76 – use a random generator and generate five words. Use one in your fic (bloody).  
The Building Blocks Challenge, drabble collection, complex word prompt #096 – lone (2 pts).

Enjoy!

**Pebbles Paint the Path**

Momo XIII: When She Turned**  
_When She Turned Ten_**

When she turned ten, she had her menarche. A small stain of reddish-brown running down the side of her left thigh. Somehow, she'd expected it to be more dramatic. More bloody.

Still, it had happened. She was supposed to report straight to the medical room when she noticed it, and Murasaki's room was in the other direction. Murasaki – the only friend left.

Midori had gone straight to the medical room like she was meant to.

Momo might be throwing away more than she could risk by detouring first. But…somehow, she couldn't go without saying, at the very least, goodbye.

She rapped lightly on the door, then ducked when the wrong Murasaki came out. It was a code with all of them. Sometimes a bad apple in the bunch got another in trouble, but it was always hard to know from a distance exactly who it was. The colours glared bright. The numbers not so much. Often, they'd avoid trouble – unless there was a trail of breadcrumbs. And since her menarche date would be logged in, there'd be a breadcrumb trail after all.

They had a whispered, hushed, conversation. Murasaki's expression changed from horror to resignation. 'I'm on my way to breakfast,' she said. That worked. Murasaki could have passed the Momo zone on her way. 'Goodbye.'

And with a quick hug outside the zone, she rushed ahead, her long braid whipping around a corner: the last she'd see for a while. There'd be other Murasakis in the training room, perhaps. When she was cleared to enter it. If she was cleared to enter it. She might see Midori too. The first Midori she'd known. It had always been the same Midori, hadn't it? They couldn't ever be sure of those early years.

She went ahead to the medical room. Her stomach knotted uncomfortably. They examined her, recorded things in her data file and then scrubbed her clean and inserted something long and white and uncomfortable between her legs. 'Come back tomorrow for a change,' said the nurse crisply, as though she was guaranteed to return the next day. She wasn't.

They marched her to the matching room. Hooked her up to a machine that made her hair stand on end before the first digimon even walked into the room. When it did, she stiffened as the electricity locked her in place. The digimon passed, and the next came before the current could relax its hold on her.

Hours passed like that. Her eyes and ears and nose all burned. Her tongue starved for water, for saliva. Her vision grew yellower until she could no longer make out what digimon passed in front of her.

Had she already failed? she wondered.

And then it was over. The current released her, and the machine and she tumbled to the floor. They gave her water. And a bed in the medical room. And the digimon she'd been matched with, when she could see and move and process things again.

Surprisingly, a green Tanemon.


End file.
